HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMERICA!
We just celebrated Independence Day. Happy Birthday, Americans! BPNN held another successful Flags4Food event. More than 150 volunteers planned routes and planted 400 flags at homes and businesses of subscribers around Verona early on July 4, and collected the flags near sundown. The Flags4Food program delivers flags to subscribers on Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day. Since it began, Flags4Food has raised money to pay for more than 300,000 meals. Please check it out at www.bpnn.org/flags4food. Great thanks to those who subscribed and to those who mapped routes and delivered flags. You show your pride in our country and your commitment to our community, and we are grateful.
While we’re on the topic of patriotism, it’s timely to consider American values related to our work at BPNN. Not political values, but American values. Everything that mentions society or government is not about politics. We used to get that. Now, even Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell typically chooses purple ties so that his attire won’t send a political message. Can’t I wear red without signaling Republicanism or blue without heralding Democratic ideals? Can’t liking rainbows sometimes just be appreciation of nature, not a political manifesto?
At BPNN, we experience American values through the lives of neighbors who suffer most in our world. That does not make us Republicans or Democrats. It makes us Americans who care about others. We help others. It’s what we do. It’s who we are. It’s American. And isn’t that the spirit that made our country excellent? Are we perfect? No person or country is. But success is measured by whether we give our all to improve the world, and that starts with helping those who need our help the most.
American values can’t include strident judgments, or we’ll become a nation of scornful cynics. Some believe that people cause their own suffering. Perhaps some do. But who gets to judge the life of any other person? I wouldn’t want someone judging me, and neither would you, dear reader. Bearing one’s life to another is too high a price to obtain food for hungry children. Americans have always rushed to help more, to do more, not to find ways to deny essential food to neighbors because they don’t measure up.
Some revolt against education, science, government, journalism, and the legal system. We must convince those friends and neighbors by our example that America remains a good place. It’s not perfect, but it is very good. Cynicism truly is the saddest form of wisdom. At BPNN, we celebrate American ideals of acceptance and joyful neighborliness.
The antidote to hatred is almost always kindness and civility. Pass it on, Folks. It took 249 years for American ideals to get us from 1776 to here, and we’ll only keep it going by turning toward each other, not turning on each other. Let’s reserve the fireworks for the Fourth of July, not interactions with our neighbors. There is much good to do. Thank you for helping.